


O Brother, Where Art Thou

by SusieBeeca



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, Implied Body Shaming, Implied Character Death, Misgendering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-21
Updated: 2017-04-21
Packaged: 2018-10-22 07:45:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10692720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SusieBeeca/pseuds/SusieBeeca
Summary: Alphys gets an unexpected surprise when she finds out it's Undyne's birthday. She has no idea what she's about to find when she starts unwrapping the unwanted gifts.





	O Brother, Where Art Thou

“Okay, let me get this straight,” Undyne said. “No pun intended.” She pointed to one of the characters on the cover of her DVD. “This one’s a guy, but he’s literally described as ‘pretty-like-a-girl-boy’?”

“Exactly!” Alphys was clapping her hands and bouncing from knee to knee on Undyne’s couch. “And that’s why it’s _real_ representation, and not just queer-baiting!”

“So it’s like, two guys... but one of them isn’t really a guy?”

“No, yaoi is totally all about guys. It’s shoujo-ai!”

Undyne frowned, eyeing the plastic cover. “Don’t you have any animes about girls?”

She drew in a breath, realizing for the first time that she might have fucked up this afternoon’s activities. “Um. I. Well, s-sure, but...”

To her relief, her stuttering got cut off by the sound of the doorbell ringing. Undyne sighed, rising from the couch and tossing the cassette back onto Alphys’ lap. “Hold on, I’ll get that.”

She pressed the button on the side of the doorframe, and the fish-like lips parted around it. Standing before her was a rather hirsute monster, a cigar chomped in his mouth and a thickly-taped box wedged under his sweaty arm.

“Does a...” He looked down at the grimy label that was taped to the top of the package. “A ‘Ulysses’ live here, son?”

“She sure does, ma’am!” Undyne said cheerily as she yanked the parcel away from him.

Alphys couldn’t quite tell why, but she felt a cold bolt of apprehension go through her when Undyne kicked the door closed behind her. “Great. Just in time, too.”

“I-in time for what?”

Her lips screwed to the side, baring a few of her yellow teeth. “My... um... birthday.”

“Oh! Oh my gosh!” She leapt up from her perch on the couch and clapped her hands together. “Undyne, I h-had no idea it was your birthday! W-we have to celebrate!”

“No we don’t.” She slumped down onto a kitchen chair and let her forehead come to rest on her palm. “Shit.”

“Wh...” Alphys suddenly felt like she was a stranger in a land where they didn’t speak her native tongue; she could tell Undyne was upset, but had no idea where that could be coming from. “I-is something wrong?”

“Shit,” she said again. Undyne put a hand to her hair, fingering her fringe. “She did it again.”

“What? Who did what again?”

“My...” It looked like every muscle in her body was tensing. “My... mother.”

"Your mother?!"

Without even thinking, she rushed forward and picked the package off the counter; Undyne made a feeble attempt to swat at it, as if trying to get it out of her grip, but she managed to wrest it away from her, peering down at the label.

“It says ‘To my dear son Ulysses’,” she read, and then looked back to her friend. “Um... I-I.... should we put ‘return to sender’, or---?”

“No.”

“But---”

Undyne pulled an aching breath into her chest, and then rose from the chair. “It’s okay, Al,” she groaned with her hand on her forehead. “I know it’s from my mom.”

She opened her mouth to protest, but her voice withered away when she saw the look on Undyne’s face. Her eye was slowly roving back and forth across the floor, and the skin above her eyepatch tightened as he frowned. “Look...”

After a moment or two of pacing, she finally regained her voice. “I know this is hard to hear, but my mom had me kind of late in life and she... um... she has a condition. She gets... kind of forgetful sometimes.”

Alphys felt her face flush with heat, and darted her eyes away.

“It’s not really a big deal,” she added quickly. “She just messes up names every now and again.”

“I... okay.” She glanced down at the parcel. “Who’s ‘Ulysses’?”

Undyne drew in a breath and held it for a few seconds; when she let it out, it was more than a little shaky. “I guess I never told you this before, but, um... I have a brother.” She cleared her throat. “A twin brother.”

Her eyebrows shot up, and she dug her claws into the sides of the box in excitement. “What? Really? That’s so cool! Why haven’t I met him yet?”

The little bubble of excitement in her gut sank when she saw the crestfallen look on Undyne’s face. “Because he’s **dead**.”

Oh _shit_. With shaking arms, Alphys placed the box on the counter and reached out to her friend. “Oh my gosh, Undyne, I... I’m s-so sorry, I d-didn’t know---”

“Yeah, I don’t exactly advertise it,” she grumbled. Her arms were folded, and she was clutching her elbows protectively around her midsection. Staring down at her boots, she mumbled “Mom remembers my... _our_  birthday, but she screws up the gifts half the time. That’s one of the reasons I never really celebrate or anything.”

“I....” What could she say? “I, um, I h-have a package of cake mix b-back at the lab. A-and I c-could buy some candles or...”

Undyne chortled, and gave her that sweet half-grin that always tugged at her heart. “Has anyone ever told you you’re fucking adorable?”

Her raspy little chuckle turned into a belly laugh when Alphys squeaked and ducked her head behind her claws. “Look, whatever she’s packed in there isn’t going to be useful to me, so why don’t you drop it off at the shelter on your way home? I bet they could use the donation.”

She picked the parcel up again, testing its weight in her palms. It did seem pretty hefty. “You... you don’t even want to look inside?”

“Nah,” she said, looking away. “She always sends the same shit. It’ll probably just be a bunch of clothes I’ll never wear.”

“Undyne...” She fumbled for words, nervously fidgeting with the edges of the packing tape. “If it really is your birthday, w-we should do something. I m-mean, w-we could go to Grillby’s---he’ll give you a d-d-drink on the house, or... or maybe... w-we could watch some anime or---”

She held up her hand, but didn’t meet Alphys’ eye. “No. I make a point of keeping it to myself.”

“But... why?”

“You’re a singleton, right?” When she saw the nod out of the corner of her eye, she continued: “Then you don’t understand what it’s like to have a twin---and you certainly don’t know what it’s like to be a twinless twin.” She snorted and began picking at her fingernails. “And I’ll bet you a whole pile of gold your mom’s not as bad as mine.”

“Well...” Alphys shifted from foot to foot. “I bet your mom didn’t ground you if you got an A minus.”

“Oh, dude. Brutal!” A bit of the pain had melted away from her face, and she leaned against the wall with her fists stuffed in her pockets. “The only time I got an A minus, my parents took me out to a fucking restaurant!”

“Did your brother go too?”

And that agonized look went rippling across her features again. “Doesn’t matter. He was always the favourite anyway,” she spat.

Alphys opened her mouth, and then closed it again. She wasn’t sure if she should apologize or offer some sort of condolence.

“Mom always wanted a son,” Undyne muttered as she scuffed her heel on the tiles. “She was so happy with Ulysses... I was just an unfortunate accident.”

“My mom wanted a tall, slender, _straight_  daughter with good eyesight and nice teeth.” She shrugged with a simpering little smile. “And she got me instead.”

“Well tell your mom she should be fucking grateful!” she retorted. “If we had the Nobel prize down here, you’d have at least three of them!”

“I... I...” She could feel her blush all the way up to her spines. “I’m... not that smart, I just have a good memory.”

“And a really bad case of self-deprecation.” Undyne’s smirk faded, and she turned her head away. “You don’t have any siblings, do you?”

“N-no.”

“Be grateful,” she sighed. “There’s a lot to be said about being an only child. You don’t have someone’s ghost always hanging over your head.”

Even though it felt wrong to push it, the words came out before she could stop them: “H-how did Ulysses d-die?”

She didn’t answer right away. Instead, she reached behind her and picked up her ponytail, running her fingertips over the split ends. “He, um.” She was looking everywhere but Alphys’ face. “He started acting out, and getting in a lot of trouble, and.... that’s when I knew I had to leave. You know, get away and make it on my own. Be my own person, not just the other part of him. I was...” Her eye was hooded and darkening. “I was so far away from my family when it happened and...” She held her hands up helplessly, as if she was trying to shrug off the memory. “It wasn’t a good time, Al. Mom was so focused on her son she couldn’t deal with her daughter.”

It sounded like a dodge, but Alphys couldn’t blame her. She had more than enough ash-filled urns tucked away in her own attic to know not to push the issue. “You know what’s funny?”

She glanced up. “No. What?”

“It’s June first,” she said with a giggle. “That means you’re a Gemini.”

“Yeah... still not getting it, Al.”

“You’re a Twin. I mean, y-you and your twin brother---you’re twins, and you’re the Twins.”

Her lips parted with a quiet “Oh!”, and then she started to laugh. “Holy shit, I never realized that before!”

“I know, right?! It’s hilarious! And I’m a Virgo, and I’m---” Then she clapped her hand over her mouth.

There was something flickering in Undyne’s eye, and a hint of flush rising to her cheeks. “Wow... really?”

“I...” Her tail sagged and shamefully pulled between her legs. Good gods, how had she let that one slip out?! “I---please don’t---p-please don’t t-tell anyone, I---”

“Hey.” When her palm rose to Alphys’ cheek, it felt warm and sticky with perspiration, but neither of them seemed to mind. “I don’t judge, honey. Okay?”

They gazed at each other for a few long moments, and then Undyne dropped her hand from her friend’s face and down to the package she had clutched between them. “Do me a favour?” she whispered.

Alphys nodded, her nostrils flared and full of the thick, sweet patchouli scent emanating from Undyne’s body.

“Take this package and get it the hell out of my sight.”

And she turned on her heel, stomping away.

“Wait!”

To her surprise, Undyne did. She hesitated in the doorway, the fingertips on her left hand trailing over the keys of her grand piano.

“A-are you sure you... you want to j-just toss this aside?” she asked.

Her middle finger sunk into the F, and her index picked at the F-sharp.

“I-I mean, m-m-maybe your mom really wanted you to h-have this...”

F, then F-sharp. F, F-sharp. Over and over---she was playing the Jaws theme.

“Okay,” Alphys murmured. “I’ll... I’ll donate it.”

“Good.”

She licked at her dry lips. “S-o so, um, s-see you around, Undyne.”

Her hand grazed upwards along the ivories, and she grazed a high E... then a D sharp, and E again, and Alphys realized she was playing Beethoven. They both stood rigidly, trying not to look at each other, as Undyne gently plucked out the first few strains of Fur Elise.

She left the tune hanging in the air as she left the room, slamming her bedroom door behind her.

Alphys moved her weight back and forth, moving the parcel from palm to palm. Despite the years of being told not to open something that wasn’t addressed to her, she felt the need to pry it open before taking it to some donation site.

She placed it on the kitchen table and used the underside of her thumbnail to slit the tape holding the top closed. Just as Undyne had predicted, the first things she unpacked were obviously boy’s clothes---even though, in her humble opinion, they would have looked stunning on her friend, the starched shirts and hound’s-tooth checked vests were far too formal for Undyne’s usual look. Digging deeper into the box, she pulled out what looked like a tuxedo jacket, complete with a cummerbund and shiny little cufflinks.

Sheet music followed, and Alphys smiled despite herself. The staves were wobbly, the notes obviously hand-drawn. Apparently Undyne---or her twin brother---had composed some songs in their younger years, but the lyrics scrawled in the margins were clearly in Undyne’s handwriting.

**_If only I could bloom_ **  
**_Like a flower, and resume_ **  
**_If only I could be_ **  
**_Who you never thought of me..._ **

She carefully stacked the sheets together and placed them on the piano bench. A hot tingle went through her when she thought of being the first monster ever to hear Undyne sing something so personal.

With her lips set in a determined line, she went back to digging through the package. Who knew what secrets Undyne might have hiding in there?

Under a few more musty books of sheet music was a leather-bound book that creaked when she picked it up; it wasn’t until she pried it open that she realized it was a photo album. Suppressing a giggle, she cracked it open and began to leaf through it, but the smile faded more and more with each page. Undyne hadn’t been kidding when she said her brother had been the favourite; every single photograph, from infancy to toddlerhood, was of him and him alone. It bothered her, but there was something else niggling at her mind, something that just didn’t seem to add up---and it wasn’t until she flipped back to the first few pages that she realized exactly what was wrong.

In every picture of Ulysses as a little fish-baby, the rooms he was in had _one_ high chair, _one_ crib, _one_  playpen. Regardless of preference, parents of twins should have had two of each. Alphys traced her clawtip over the photographs, and bit by bit, the pieces started to come together.  
There were only pictures of one baby, and the child she was looking at had big, bright yellow eyes and a mop of red hair. If Undyne and her twin hadn’t been different genders, they could have been identical.

She thought about Undyne, and she thought very carefully. She thought about her friend---her friend who towered over six feet tall. Her broad-shouldered friend with the deep, smoky voice. Then she stared back down at the photograph of baby Ulysses.

They looked so much alike.

In fact... he looked _exactly_  like her.

**Author's Note:**

> A good friend of mine planted this head canon, and now I can't let it go! I hope you enjoyed.


End file.
